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Anonymous Goes After North Korea
Anonymous has restarted its attack against North Korea and once again is using a North Korean Twitter account to announce website scalps.
The Twitter account @uriminzok was the scene of announcements about the hacked websites during the last stage of Op North Korea, and reports have tipped up there again.
The first wave of attacks saw a stream of websites defaced or altered with messages or images that were very much not in favour of the latest North Korean hereditary leader, Kim Jong-un.
They were supported by a Pastebin message signed by Anonymous that called for some calming of relations between North Korea and the US, and warned of cyber attacks in retaliation.
“Citizens of North Korea, South Korea, USA, and the world. Don’t allow your governments to separate you. We are all one. We are the people. Our enemies are the dictators and regimes, our goals are freedom and peace and democracy,” read the statement. “United as one, divided by zero, we can never be defeated!”
Before the attacks restarted, the last Twitter message promised that more was to come. It said, “OpNorthKorea is still to come. Another round of attack on N.Korea will begin soon.” Anonymous began delivering on that threat in the early hours this morning.
More of North Korean websites are in our hand. They will be brought down.
— uriminzokkiri (@uriminzok) April 15, 2013
We’ve counted nine websites downed, defacements and hacks, and judging by the stream of confirmations they happened over a two hour period. No new statement has been released other than the above.
jajusasang.com twitter.com/uriminzok/stat…
— uriminzokkiri (@uriminzok) April 15, 2013
Downed websites include the glorious uriminzokkiri.com, a North Korean news destination. However, when we tried it we had intermittent access.
Last time around the Anonymous hackers had taken control of North Korea’s Flickr account. This week we found the message, “This member is no longer active on Flickr.”
IBM Goes After Apache’s Tomcat
Java Developers looking for a mobile-friendly platform could be happy with the next release of IBM’s Websphere Application Server, which is aimed at offering a lighter, more dynamic version of the app middleware.
Shown off at the IBM Impact show in Las Vegas on Tuesday, Websphere Application Server 8.5, codenamed Liberty, has a footprint of just 50MB. This makes it small enough to run on machines such as the Raspberry Pi, according to Marie Wieck, GM for IBM Application and Infrastructure Middleware.
Updates and bug fixes can also be done on the fly with no need to take down the server, she added.
The Liberty release will be launched this quarter, and already has 6,000 beta users, according to Wieck.
John Rymer of Forrester said that the compact and dynamic nature of the new version of Websphere Application Server could make it a tempting proposition for Java developers.
“If you want to install version seven or eight, it’s a big piece of software requiring a lot of space and memory. The installation and configuration is also tricky,” he explained.
“Java developers working in the cloud and on mobile were moving towards something like Apache Tomcat. It’s very light, starts up quickly and you can add applications without having to take the system down. IBM didn’t have anything to respond to that, and that’s what Liberty is.”
For firms needing to update applications three times a year, for example, the dynamic capability of Liberty will make it a much easier process.
“If developers want to run Java on a mobile device, this is good,” Rymer added.
The new features are also backwards compatible, meaning current Websphere users will be able to take advantage of the improvements.
However, IBM could still have difficulty competing in the app server space on a standalone basis, according to Rymer.
Stratfor Security Hit By Anonymous
January 4, 2012 by admin
Filed under Around The Net
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The Stratfor, security firm whose website was compromised over the weekend by members of the anarchic computer-hacking group Anonymous, has reported that victims of the attack have had their credit cards used again.
Victims of the attack, mostly employees of major companies or agencies which use Stratfor’s, learnt at Christmas that their names, addresses and credit card details had been published online. The cards were then used to make large donations to major charities.
Now it seems that Stratfor is warning that the cards were being used again if the victims complained to the press. On another webiste Anonymous used another website to mock victims who spoke to the Associated Press about their experience. Its said “We went ahead and ran up your card a bit.”
Hackers Plan To Go After Fox
Anonymous plans to take out the Fox news network because of its coverage of the Wall Street Protests.
Dubbed “Operation Fox Hunt”, Anonymous announced the plans on YouTube to attack the Fox News website on the anniversary of Guy Fawkes Day. Anonymous is also planning to target former Fox News personality Glenn Beck as well as current Fox News representative Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly during “Operation Fox Hunt”.
Anonymous said that it has had a gutsful of “right wing conservative propaganda” and “belittling the occupiers” of the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations. Anonymous recently a distributed denial-of-service attack against the Oakland police department’s website after a 24-year-old wounded Marine home from serving two tours in Iraq was critically injured in the Occupy Oakland protest. Police allegedly threw an object that fractured the marine’s skull landing him in the hospital.
The Linux Kernel Got Hacked
Servers that are part of the Linux kernel.org infrastructure were affected during a recent intrusion where attackers managed to gain root access and plant Trojan scripts.
According to an email sent out to the community by kernel.org chief administrator John Hawley, known as warthog9, the incident started with the compromise of a server referred to as Hera. The personal colocated machine of Linux developer H Peter Anvin (HPA) and additional kernel.org systems were also affected.
“Upon some investigation there are a couple of kernel.org boxes, specifically hera and odin1, with potential pre-cursors on demeter2, zeus1 and zeus2, that have been hit by this,” Hawley wrote.
The intrusion was discovered on 28 August and according to preliminary findings attackers gained access by using a set of compromised credentials. They then elevated their privileges to root by exploiting a zero-day vulnerability that the kernel.org administrators have yet to identify.
Fortunately, logs and parts of the exploit code were retained and will help the investigation. A Trojan was added to the startup scripts of affected systems, but gave itself away through Xnest /dev/mem error messages.
According to the kernel.org admins, these error messages have been seen on other systems as well, but it’s not clear if those machines are vulnerable or compromised. “If developers see this, and you don’t have Xnest installed, please investigate,” the administrators advised.
The good news is that the exploit failed on systems running the latest Linux kernel version, 3.1-rc2, which was released two weeks ago. This is possibly the fortunate consequence of one of the bugfixes it contains.
Accused Hacker Out On Bail In England
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The accused ‘Topiary’, whose name is Jake Davis, was charged on Sunday and bailed by the courts yesterday. He was charged with five offences: Unauthorised access to a computer system, Encouraging or assisting offences, Conspiracy with others to carry out a Distributed Denial of Service Attack on the website of the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, Conspiracy to commit offences of Section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990, and Conspiracy with others to commit offences of Section 3 Computer Misuse Act 1990 contrary to Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977.
According to a report at the Guardian, his bail conditions are that Davis must wear an electronic tag, not access the internet, and not leave his house between 10pm and 7am.
Davis, who appeared outside court wearing sunglasses and holding a copy of “Free Radicals: The Secret Anarchy of Science” by Micheal Brooks and who allegedly authored the Rupert Murdoch is dead story that appeared on the hacked web site of the Sun newspaper, has already gained support on the internet in general and especially on Twitter.